Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) studying the cycloid, engraved on the tablet he is holding in his left hand; the scattered papers at his feet are his Pensées, the open book his Lettres provinciales. Exhibited at the Salon of 1785; the plaster model was exhibited at the Salon of 1781.

Portrait of Aegus Gabrielides - a Greek Cypriot waiter who worked in a London cafe frequented by Dobell in the 1930s and modelled regularly for Dobell and his artist friends.

Textos en inglés / English translation

On September 18 is the birthday of

Anthonij (Anton) Rudolf Mauve, Dutch realist painter born in 1838, who was a leading member of the Hague School. He signed his paintings 'A. Mauve' or with a monogrammed 'A.M.'. A master colorist, he was a very significant early influence on his cousin-in-law Vincent van Gogh.

Most of Mauve's work depicts people and animals in outdoor settings. In his Morning Ride in the Rijksmuseum, for example, fashionable equestrians at the seacoast are seen riding away from the viewer. An unconventional detail, horse droppings in the foreground, attests his commitment to realism.

His best known paintings depict peasants working in the fields. His paintings of flocks of sheep were especially popular with American patrons, so popular indeed that a price differential developed between scenes of "sheep coming" and "sheep going".

The son of a sculptor-carpenter, he grew up in Paris in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine. Student of the sculptor Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne (1704-1778), obtained the Prix de Rome at 18. He won the first prize for sculpture at the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture in Paris.

The king offered his help financing his studies at the French Academy in Rome.

Had two children: Catherine Flore Pajou, who married the sculptor Clodion, and Jacques Augustin Catherine Pajou (1766-1828) who was historicist painter and portraitist.

Pajou was master of the sculptors Philippe-Laurent Roland, Jacques-Edme Dumont, and David d'Angers.

Michel-Jean Cazabon, born in 1813, regarded as the first great Trinidadian painter and is Trinidad's first internationally known artist. He is also known as the layman painter. He is renowned for his paintings of Trinidad scenery and for his portraits of planters, merchants and their family in the 19th century. Cazabon's paintings are to be cherished not only for their beauty but also their historical importance: his painting has left us with a clear picture of the many aspects of life in Trinidad through much of the nineteenth century.

Cazabon relied on nature to expose the vistas which the plains of the Caroni and the tropical forests at Chaguaramas are idyllic in spender. His portraits of the mulattoes, indenture Indians and Negroes where the bases of debate, and whether the painter immortalized these people because he felt a personal bond with them rather less than the European Creoles which no stately portraits were ever recorded.

Cazabon preferred to describe himself as a "landscape painter", but in Trinidad, away from the metropolitan influences and stimuli, he embraced the everyday, often mundane, forms of artistic expression - teacher, illustrator, portrait painter.

Maurizio Cattelan, Italian artist born in 1960 in Padua. He is known for his satirical sculptures, particularly La Nona Ora (The Ninth Hour), depicting Pope John Paul II struck down by a meteorite.

Cattelan started his career in the 1980s making wooden furniture in Forlì (Italy), where he came to know some designers, like Ettore Sottsass.

He made a catalogue of his work, which he sent to galleries. This promotion gave him an opening in design and contemporary art. He created a sculpture of an ostrich with its head buried in the ground, wore a costume of a figurine with a giant head of Picasso, and affixed a Milanese gallerist to a wall with tape. During this period, he also created the Oblomov Foundation.

Cattelan’s personal art practice has led to him gaining a reputation as an art scene’s joker. He has been described by Jonathan P. Binstock, curator of contemporary art at the Corcoran Gallery of Art "as one of the great post-Duchampian artists and a smartass, too"

Cattelan’s art makes fun of various systems of order – be it social niceties or his regular digs at the art world – and he often utilises themes and motifs from art of the past and other cultural sectors in order to get his point across. Cattelan saw no reason why contemporary art should be excluded from the critical spotlight it shines on other areas of life and his work seeks to highlight the incongruous nature of the world and our interventions within it no matter where they may lie. His work was often based on simple puns or subverts clichéd situations by, for example, substituting animals for people in sculptural tableaux. Frequently morbidly fascinating, Cattelan’s dark humour sets his work above the simple pleasures of well-made visual one-liners.

María Luisa Pacheco, Bolivian painter born in 1919 in La Paz, who emigrated to the United States.

She studied at the local Academia de Bellas Artes, later becoming a member of the faculty. In the late 1940s and until 1951, she worked at the newspaper La Razón as an illustrator and as the editor of their literary section. A scholarship from the Government of Spain allowed Pacheco to continue her studies in 1951 and 1952, as a graduate student at the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid.

In 1956, Maria Luisa Pacheco was the recipient of three consecutive Fellowship Awards from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation in New York City. The first fellowship awarded coincided with an invitation to exhibit at the Museum of the Organization of American States (OAS) in Washington DC. As a result of both of those opportunities, Maria Luisa Pacheco moved to New York in 1956. The Guggenheim Foundation fellowship and also the OAS exhibit, each included the acquisition of a Maria Luisa Pacheco painting for their permanent art collections. Those paintings are currently exhibited in the art museums of those organizations, as part of the periodic rotation of their permanent collections.

Gustavo Bacarisas y Podestá, Gibraltarian painter born in 1873. His work, of a figurative style and varied themes, is characterised by the rich use of colour.

He studied in Paris, France and worked in Buenos Aires, Argentina until 1916. He later relocated to the Andalusian capital of Seville. He also travelled to Sweden in order to create the sets and figurines for the opera Carmen. He did the same for the premier of Love, the Magician (Spanish: El amor brujo) at the Teatro Español in Madrid. During the Spanish civil war he relocated, this time to the Portuguese island of Madeira, returning in 1937 to Gibraltar. At the end of the Second World War, he moved to Spain, settling down in Seville.

Bacarisas exhibited his work in many Spanish cities as well as abroad. He was granted a gold medal and the title of honorary professor by the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of St Isabella of Hungary, and was made member of the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando.

William Dobell, Australian artist born in Newcastle, New South Wales, in 1899.

He showed early artistic promise, entertaining his classmates at Cooks Hill Public School with impromptu sketches. Dobell left school at 14 to work in a Sydney drafting office, but soon moved to the advertising department, producing illustrations for newspapers and catalogues. While in Sydney, Dobell took evening classes at the Sydney Art School, and in 1929 won the Society of Artists Travelling Scholarship, which enabled him to live and study abroad. This marked a turning point in his life and the experience he gained whilst overseas led to the development of his mature style. On his return to Sydney in 1938 Dobell gained part-time work as a teacher at the East Sydney Technical College. His portraits were highly regarded by the art establishment. In 1942 Dobell was appointed as an official war artist. William Dobell was renowned for his insightful portraits, and won the Archibald Prize for portraiture three times in 1943, 1948 and 1959. He was awarded a knighthood in 1966.

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